After reviewing the goDaddy commercials, it isn’t hard to see who these ads are aimed at. If you are measuring how effective the ads are, just look at the companies booming growth in past couple of years. If you are measuring the ads by the content, they may not stack up to most commercials out there. If you aren’t into technology and domain names but just like to look at girls, then these ads might attract you as well.

How effective the ads are is directed at who your audience is. Are people coming to the site because of the ads? This can be measured in a very basic way. Traffic generated by these internet ads is a good way to measure if these videos are paying off. Monitor how many clicks happened on what ads. A small, one question survey about hey they got here to the site or they heard of us. All great ways capture user input.

These ads are NOT something that you would want show to your grandmother to get her to join goDaddy. Then again, your grandmother is not goDaddy’s target audience. Do you see the trend here? How effective the ads are isn’t based on the content. Is it effective is the question at the end of the day.

People keep talking about the content and degrading women. It isn’t like anyone forced these women do these degrading acts in these commercials in the internet ads. These women are paid very, very well to do exactly what they did in this video, promote goDaddy. I dare say that if these women didn’t want to do these articles, there are plenty of other women out there that would have taken their spot for the same money.

If sex sells and people are buying it, isn’t it a good marketing strategy for people to keep promoting it.

At this point, I doubt that people are buying goDaddy domains because of these ads. How many people that watch NASCAR on the weekends and jump back into web development on Monday morning?

I think the ads work. They fit the persona that goDaddy is trying to portrait to the public. Cutting edge but at the same time very cool with hot girls and up-to-date technologies. Where else would people get that combo?

Judging by goDaddy’s past success, I do not believe that goDaddy is not going to change its marketing tactics any time soon. They do not have any motivation to. Would you and why?

Given that resorting to half naked women is an easy way out, if it works then why not go for it. If you have a company, which made you millions, would you have any motivation to change the way that you presented your marketing? At the beginning of the company’s success, they started off with a single goDaddy girl. Isn’t it only simple math that if you can afford more girl icons, buy them?

The ads can be a little much at times. If you find yourself in this position, then these ads are not generated towards you. I do think they are effective. I do believe the ads work.

The world we live in today, this is what marketing has become. If the public keeps responding to this in a positive way then companies will continue to produce it. Plain and simple, it sells!

﻿Truly authentic fire roasted pork at a fraction of the time, with a portable grill? Yes, it can be done. La Caja China has taken the guess work out of authentic flavor pork and trimmed down the time it takes to enjoy your harvest. And it’s portable. ﻿﻿﻿﻿Why stop at pigs?

Made famous by the ancient Chinese culture, these techniques quickly spread across many cultures. During the 1940’s a Cuban gentleman decided to recreate this deprecated cooking style. Rekindling the flame from ancient tradition of China, it’s now easier than ever to have a gourmet meal from ancient civilization.

Bring your roasting to a different level of perfection with the equipment tested with age. We preserved the technological process required for the meat of highest quality to fulfill its potential.

“As the food cooks, the aromas become as enticing as the spectacle itself. It becomes not just a conversation piece, but a conversation starter. Most of all, La Caja China is realizing that in 4 hours you’ve made a delicious, authentic meal that ended up feeding your soul.”

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Preparation time varies on your taste, skill and dedication. From beginner who just wants the authentic pork taste, to experience chef such as Vincent Barcelona. The hard work is done for you in a cleverly designed box which is built with roasting in mind.

Pigs will never be the same. After fire basting for around 3 hours, your pig is transformed into a miraculous dinner. Bedazzle both friends and family, as the ease of use La Caja China slaves away over the hot grill for you.

Would you waste your time with a modern, factory-produced grill cooking pork?

You could use the uniquely, handmade box that cuts away a third of the time and get your party going instead. The box is perfect for family picnic or super bowl parties to serve everybody’s taste.

Get your roast on anywhere you like! Its two wheels make it easy to maneuver around.

The box of two layers with boost your senses to the next level. Get in touch with the raw experience of perfectly-cooked meat to challenge your taste.

Two level-construction of the box creates perfect conditions for the roasting process. Enhance your cooking skills with the perfect helper and impress your family and your friends.

After a single outing or gathering with the phenomenal La Caja, you will never look at roasting the same. Take off your apron, set aside your tongs, and turn off the old grill and GET YOURSELF A BOX!

Creating a “Pillar Article” is a great way to create consistent traffic to your site. With multiple links to other articles placed throughout your own article, it makes it SEO friendly and will be a “Pillar” for your blog. Straight from the website, here is an exact definition of what a “Pillar Article” actually is and what it should consist of:

“What Is A Pillar?

A pillar is blog content, usually an article, which does some very important things:

It will bring in a rush of new readers and backlinks (other sites linking to your blog).

It will continue to bring in more readers over time as you and other people refer to it, even though it may be buried in the archives of your blog.

Eventually it will bring in traffic from search engines (this is largely because so many other web pages link to it).

You can list it in a separate area (like an articles page) with all your other pillars so your best content can easily be accessed and your value clearly demonstrated.

It is not time dependent, so in twelve months’ time it will still be relevant and popular.”

Having this great asset in your arsenal is definitely going to separate you from every other blogger out there. Besides, the reason we are writing these articles is for people to read them, right? Or did I not get the memo…

One section that I found really interesting about this is article is the second to last point (#5) Yaro makes:

“5. One of the most popular pillar concepts is a List Article”

This is all too true. Having a discussion in class about this last week, I was still exhausted thinking, why am I drawn to these articles? It seems that List Articles get the most traffic, even when the content isn’t top notch.

How many times have you found yourself perusing around the web and a title caught your eye, “10 Things About Life you Have to Know” or the all too infamous: “20 Ways to Make Your Hair Look Just Like Bieber’s!”?

Yaro covers it briefly in his article by saying:

Lists are easily digested by human beings.

Lists provide directly actionable lessons and people love to share lists with other people.

While he goes into further detail about each point, I have come up with my own theories about how/why people are attracted to List.

Begin rant now…

Lists are a way for people to jot things down so they do not forget them. More times than not, if you have the basics listed, lets say first three of a list, then the readers/users are more inclined to click on the link to read the rest. This is a very easy way to stay organized and display a curriculum to your viewers without overwhelming them.

Not bombarding your viewers with paragraph after paragraph is a good way to keep readers. This ensures that they are moving around the pages, getting the gist of your meaning, which you are going on and on about. Visually, lists are more appealing than plain text.

Paralleling my first point, it is an easy way for neurotic people like myself to feel like they can accomplish things. Sometimes I write things on my list just to clear my head and have a feeling of progress when I do them. Empowering people to work at their own pace, and guiding them through it is a very easy way to encourage your readers to take action. Especially if it’s something they are searching for.

I recommend that people take a few minutes out of their busy day and read over this article discussing good blog content, especially if you yourself are a blogger. It goes to show how good content can make or break your Internet presence.

After finishing a class last semester on the user experience of the web, my eyes were opened to how content was foremost the most important factor in a website. Surveys straight from our book, insert book title and link here, quoted that

“content was 70% more important to readers than design”.

This was an interesting experience for me as I started analyzing the web visually. Certain sites were getting traffic that were very basic in design. The major ones were Wikipedia, Facebook, and even CNN. Then I started seeing how they layout information to the reader. It’s all in some kind of list style. BRILLIANT!

In this wonderful world of web that we are so deeply involved with, its highly unlikely that someone hasn’t developed it done it before. There is an upside and a downside to this as well. Meaning that it is nice that someone had laid the foundation for you, just a bummer that you didn’t think of it first.

There is no reason to stress over who came up with the thought of it first, just think of a way to make it your own. Case and point, many times a client wants a full CMS to make changes in-house to their website. A lot of the times they think they will never need to see your face again once THEY have control over the website.

You have a couple of options here.

Create your own custom CMS

Use a current open source CMS that someone has already created and customize it to your liking

Set them up with one of the many popular platforms out there that already incorporate a CMS feature (WordPress is the most popular and user friendly)

Truth be told, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel!

With that said, you have to start thinking about yourself and how you can benefit from this experience, and not end up working for free. I have been burned a few times by a client and from then on, have learned my lesson. Many times simple things like wordpress is all the client needs.

As an eager developer myself, I find myself looking for ways to try and implement the last things that I have learned on the web. Creating your own CMS with all these bells and whistles. As I pitched my plan to a professor at my school, he opened my eyes to my downfall. His words echo vividly to this day:

“ Keep on mind that if you do this from scratch, your doing this for yourself. Not because it’s the best way for this project.” –Rene Alverez

After sleeping on these words I then realized that this is not the most efficient way of going about things. I am going to invest long hours, when these tools are already put together for me. A client isn’t going to care that I built everything from scratch with the latest technologies because half of them couldn’t spell PHP let alone know what it does. That’s why I’m here.

They just care that it works!

If you keep true to these guidelines you will in much better shape than I was. Never be afraid to use what readily available. Your time will come to showcase your skills. Trust me! Just be patient young grasshoppa!

﻿A great way to discover new technologies is to keep up with the technologies themselves. Reading blogs, research, and simply keeping up with the languages is a start. Most of the languages are open source so there is a large community that revolves around them, which informs people of different updates and changes. New technologies are constantly changing and coming into being.

This is much easier said than done. With many different technologies out there, it can be hard to stay on top of each thing. Keeping a close eye on developing open source code is no small job.

Luckily for us developers out there, there is a plethora of different blogs and news feeds that will pick up our slack. Many of these blog give good information that can be backed up with some form of truth. No to take everything you read on the internet as winning lottery numbers, but it will give a good direction in how the technologies are changing.

A few of my favorite blogs to keep up on these changes are, of course, Nettuts, Web Appers, thinkVitamin, and many more. These blogs will keep you up to date on a variety of different languages.

Many times we wonder to ourselves what will it be like when we enter a work environment? What technologies will we have to keep up with then and where should I start?

To be honest, the same ones, just on a different scale of course. As an intern at a web firm now and also working for a small firm, the things that I do are parallel to what I have learned in school. Is till work with PHP and backend technologies that I thought I would never see again. Being on a different scale, you start to use frameworks more and more. If you are looking to start your career as a PHP developer, I HIGHLY can’t stress enough that you learn the zend framework AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

There are many, many, many things that the Zend Framework offers over other frameworks. It integrates with everything and has a library for everything else. Seriously, This thing could solve world piece if enough people knew the framework!

These are the technologies that the pros use. There are many different frameworks out there for various things. My first and personal favorite would be CodeIgniter. I think this is a great all around framework with a very light footprint. Doesn’t come with all the bells and whistles as Zend, but it is a great way to get your feet wet with the MVC pattern.

All these things that I mentioned are going to be out of date before I publish this post, that’s just how the web works. But never underestimate your own abilities. Many times you will surprise yourself with how much you know when you get that first job.

“Learning to navigate the PHP documentation is the single most useful thing you can do for yourself as a programmer.”

Mastering the basics are the keys to success. There is no way a building could stand with a weak foundation. Everything you learn from here on out will depend upon how well you master the basics.

There are many different tools out there to help you master the basics. Following different tutorial blogs is a great start. During my early development, besides Rima, Nettuts was my ace in the hole. Covering everything from basic html to advanced php and asp, the material is broken down into video and written tutorials.

I myself am an aspiring PHP developer looking to have a few homebrews and create the next facebook, thanks Mark. I have found view great write-ups that will help spring all aspiring PHP developers to the top. These couple articles are a great place to get started.

Jason Lengstorf is one of the best PHP developers right now. Coming from a self-taught scripting background, he has become a successful freelance developer that has started his own company. He has written several article for my favorite blog, Nettuts, and also has had two books published through well-known companies.

Jason’s most recent articles on Nettuts, is advising new developers to learn the basics about programmer first. It’s never easy to be in a situation trying to understand a function and not truly comprehending the syntax of the language itself. Learning the basics is boring and time consuming, but in the long run it will great sturdy ground for you to grow as a developer.

“Try to Use at Least One Unfamiliar Concept in Every Project.”

This is an invaluable point! Many times we get to comfortable in the technologies that we know and forget to step outside of our box. Learning new technologies is a great way to keep up with new techniques, which is very important in an ever-changing world. With so many things that can go wrong, it is crucial to stay on top of your game to keep security threats at bay.

﻿About myself… Where do I start? I guess a name would be as good an intro as any.

What is your name?

My name is David Register, and I am currently a student at Miami International University of Art and Design with a major in Web Design and Interactive Media.

What is your major and how you came about deciding upon this major?

My b-day party

As an engineering student at the University of Alabama, computers have always interested me. I soon realized that I would be changing my major three more times before I would settle on anything. Not even a year into my studies at the university, I switched my major to Graphic Design. I was very happy with my change. This change would introduce me to the world of basic scripting. I had two web classes that walked us through basic HTML/CSS and JavaScript. It was these classes that opened my eyes to something unexpected: I knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my days. Regardless, I was only on “major change” number two. I eagerly searched and soon found this school in Miami. Within the year I was taking my first PHP/MySQL class.

How long have you been at the school and this major?

I have been at MIU going on two years now and have yet to change majors. I thoroughly enjoy web development and find it very interesting. Being as this career can be done from any location, I hope to one day accomplish my desire to travel the world and experience new cultures.

What have you been doing since high school?

It has been an exciting ride since leaving high school. I have been through three different majors at two different universities, for three different directions. I have worked various jobs here and there, and working to pay bills to get by has been the consumption of the last few years. MIU has been the most expensive decision I think I have ever made…s

Who are the most important people in your life?

The most important people around me today are my family. They are always there to give me support and encourage me when I’m overly frustrated. I respect them a great deal for everything they have done for me and put up with!

What do you read?

When I have time to read, I am interested in different programming blogs and learning new scripting languages. I thoroughly enjoy the way people use different scripts to accomplish various web applications. There are multiple blog sites that provide tutorials on different programming topics that I follow regularly. Troubleshooting errors (my own stuff and otherwise) is when I find myself reading the most is troubleshoot errors!

Life passions. What one thing is very exciting to you and motivates you?

Believe it or not, I have a passion for learning. I am addicted to learning and gaining as much knowledge as I can about web development. I soak it all in and enjoy every second of it. This could be a big part of the reason why my free time is consumed by reading blogs. I am always interested in learning new technologies and applying them in various projects.